Jesus was not such a gentle,
non-confrontational person that we often see pictured in paintings. He was very
much an “in your face” kind of person. He did it with His words and with His
actions. And those words and actions so often confront our cultural biases. Take
today’s passage as an example.
Jesus has turned water into wine, an alcoholic
beverage that gets people drunk! It is not that they had not already had enough
to drink. They had. They had already consumed all the wine provided by the
groom. And he makes another 25 gallons! And it is the best quality served at
the banquet. So much for our teetotaling mental images!
And then John records Jesus violently
clearing the Temple of all the commercial enterprises. I know we don’t have a
Temple today, but I wonder what Jesus would think of gift items for sale in the
lobby of the church? Or coffee outlets? Or the Jesus people paraphernalia on
our walls at home? Just thinking out loud, not making any final decisions.
And then the religious authorities come up
and ask Jesus to prove He is allowed to do these types of things. Who is He to
try and clean up the mess they have allowed, perhaps even profited from? They
want more than words. They don’t want “I have the authority.” They want a
physical sign. They are in essence saying that talk is cheap. Put up or shut
up.
Jesus’ answer points to His death and
resurrection. His body becomes a new Temple that gets destroyed and rebuilt. It
is easy to rebuild a Temple made of stone; quite another thing to rise from the
dead. With all our advanced technology we can’t even make the simplest of
living organisms from scratch. We can take what already exists and manipulate
it, extracting the already produced DNA and splicing and dicing it, but we
haven’t even begun to start from scratch. We can’t throw the essential elements
into a bowl and have the most fundamental combination arise on its own, or even
with the greatest amount of intervention possible.
When Jesus rose from the dead this even made
sense to the disciples. Jesus was yet again telling them of the key element of
their relationship with God. It would not be a physical building, but through
His physical body. He would be the key. All must come through Him. He became
the new Temple through which forgiveness and reconciliation became available to
all. A new community arose and spanned culture and geography.